


you say you’d like to see me try (climbing)

by jeepsarmitage



Series: god only knows it's not what we would choose to do (me and you) [5]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Autistic!Carmilla, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21692029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeepsarmitage/pseuds/jeepsarmitage
Summary: “Why don’t they like me, Carm? The other kids?”“They just don’t understand you, kid.”In which Carmilla is fearless
Relationships: Laura Hollis/Carmilla Karnstein
Series: god only knows it's not what we would choose to do (me and you) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/239849
Comments: 9
Kudos: 63





	you say you’d like to see me try (climbing)

**Author's Note:**

> so uh, it's been three years. sorry about that. 
> 
> a lot has happened. i've moved house like three times. graduated. started my masters degree (i'm writing a thesis? wild). 
> 
> i've thought about this story a lot. i never intended to abandon it. i just got busy. so here it is. the series is done now. my writing is a bit different i think (time, i guess?) but it's here. and i hope you like it.
> 
> you can follow me on instagram if you like (isaachini). not sure if i'll post anymore fanfic but if you wanna keep up with my shenanigans that's the best place to find me.

**and I will climb that hill in my own way**

**.**

> _And I will climb that hill in my own way_  
>  _Just wait a while for the right day_  
>  _And as I rise above the tree line and the clouds_  
>  _I look down, hearing the sound of the things you’ve said today_

//

Her apartment is on the sixth floor.

It’s a nice apartment, with a big window that allows her to look out over the side streets of the neighbourhood towards the inner-city skyline. She likes it, because it’s close to the bus stop, and there’s a café around the corner that has the particular type of coffee she likes before she gets on the bus, and when the sun goes down she can see the lights of the city.

There’s stairs, but there’s an elevator too. Carmilla likes the elevator, because it’s clean and quick and when she comes home from work now she’s tired. It’s nice, not having to climb up the stairs. Sometimes she has to share the space with one of the other people in the building, but the people who live here don’t seem interested in conversation after the quick ‘hello’ exchanged when either of them get in.

It’s nice, the apartment. And it’s also a ten minute walk to where James lives. Which is good, because he comes over and watches movies with her on the weekend. He brings the same type of popcorn and they drink red wine and watch movies and doesn’t expect her to talk much.

She does a lot of talking during the week, now.

//

When she decided to go back to college, she didn’t know what she wanted to do. She just knew that she wanted a change – _needed_ a change - and now was the time to do that.

It was weird, and uncomfortable, thinking about changing the routine she’d had for so long. Yet, at the same time, the thought of doing something that she actually wanted, that she had chosen for herself and worked towards made her heart flutter in a way she hadn’t felt since she had met Laura in the bar all those years ago.

So she persisted; scrolling through page after page of college website, trying to decide which degree she wanted to do. James suggested philosophy, saying she spent so much time thinking that she’d fit right in.

“You could look at the stars and think hard thoughts about the state of the world, Carm!”

“I’d rather shove a fencepost through my sternum,” she’d drawled in reply.

James had laughed, before telling her quietly he was going into pre-med. She ruffled his hair, and laughed as he protested.

If he blushed when she told him quietly that she was proud of him, she didn’t bring it up.

//

It was Mark Hollis who suggested she study to be a teacher.

He was still bed-bound when she visited him a few days after coming back from Europe. He looked older, more tired and the wrinkled by his eyes seemed more profound than she remembered. He was happy to see her, though, ushering her into his room and telling her to sit in the chair by his bed and tell him everything about Europe.

When she told him of her plans to go back to college, he beamed proudly at her.

“You know, I’ve always thought that you’d be a great teacher, Carm,” he said, “For the younger kids. Even day-care. You have the patience, and you _care_. Those kids would love you.”

“Are you sure?” She had asked, worrying her lip between her teeth and frowning slightly at the older man, “Do you think I could?”

Mark reached out and put his hand over hers, stilling the fingers that were drumming a nervous pattern on her knee. His hand seemed to shake and Carmilla realised with a start that Mark was _thin._ He was smiling when she looked back up at him, and he just nodded at her, and Carmilla smiled back before nodding with a certainty she hadn’t felt in a while.

She could do this.

//

When she graduates four years later, Mark Hollis sits in his wheelchair next to James and Joseph, smiling proudly at her as she walks across the stage.

//

Mark died not long after.

His heart gave out, the doctors said. He was old, and he hadn’t truly recovered from his first heart attack.

Ironically, it was Laura that called her.

“I know we never really did the friends thing,” she said. Carmilla could hear her sharp intake of breath over the phone, could picture the way Laura’s brows would be pulled inwards as she think about the right thing to say. “He talked about you. To me, I mean. About how proud he was of you. He kept telling me to call you, and I’m….well I’m sorry I never did. I know this is weird, and you-well you deserve better than what I’ve given you. But I’d also really like to talk to you. Properly, I mean. I – I don’t know what to do.”

She’s crying, Carmilla can tell. And for a moment she considers just hanging up. Laura’s right, of course, that they never did the friends thing that they said they would on Joseph’s front steps that day after dinner. Mark had hinted, apparently to both of them, that they should talk.

As much as she wanted to be mad at Laura for not calling, it’s not like Carmilla had called Laura either.

“There’s a café near my apartment, you can meet me there in an hour if you like,” she finds herself saying before rattling off the address.

There’s a pause, and for a moment Carmilla thinks Laura is about to refuse. And then she hears a shuddering breath.

“Okay.”

//

Laura, she thinks, seems to have changed entirely and also not at all.

It’s the way she holds herself. Almost as though she’s less assured of herself. She also seems exhausted, and spends far too long staring into her coffee cup than she does looking at Carmilla.

The silence is familiar, and yet so unlike Laura that Carmilla can’t help but study every aspect of Laura’s presence with a scrutiny that comes from a place inside her she can’t place.

“Are you okay?”

Laura jerks up, frowning briefly at Carmilla before tilting her head and looking at Carmilla with an expression so familiar Carmilla briefly forgets that the last few years happened at all. For a moment, a brief moment, it’s like they’re back in the bar, and Laura is asking her where her sunglasses were.

“I think – I mean, no. Not really.” Laura shakes her head slightly. Her hair is shorter, cut to the shoulder rather than the mid-back length Carmilla remembers. It’s darker too, but only slightly, and it suits her. Suits her in a way that Carmilla thinks must come with simply moving through adulthood and adjusting to your place in the world.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Laura sighs, and finally meets Carmilla’s eyes. Carmilla tilts her head, frowning as she waits for Laura’s response.

There’s a beat, and another one before Laura speaks, catching Carmilla off-guard with a question rather than an answer.

“Can I tell you something?”

//

LaFontaine and Perry cook her dinner while she tells them about Laura.

LaF, for their part, doesn’t understand at all why she would voluntarily meet with Laura. Perry, it seems, has slightly more sympathy but still chastises Carmilla, purely for putting herself in a _‘potentially emotionally disruptive environment!’_

“It was fine,” Carmilla assures them both, watching with interest as Perry pulls a tray of roasted vegetables out of the oven. “She’s changed.”

“Yes, but she still _cheated on you_ ,” LaF responds, reaching for a carrot while Perry’s back is turned. Carmilla smiles to herself as Perry swats LaF’s hand away and ushers them out of the kitchen.

“We’ve both changed,” Carmilla says as LaF settles into the seat next to her, “and her dad died.”

LaF hums in response, and Carmilla watches them out of the corner of her eye as they mull it over.

“It’s not your responsibility,” they finally say, “to pull her through this grief. It’s not your responsibility.”

Carmilla frowns, “I don’t understand.”

It’s Perry that speaks next, and Carmilla is reminded that Perry was a floor don in college. “What LaFontaine means, honey, is that while Laura is hurting from Mark’s passing, you have to look after yourself as well. Mark meant a lot to you, as well, and given your history with Laura, and who you are as a person, you need to make sure you aren’t falling into old habits.”

“Old habits?”

“Putting Laura before yourself,” is LaF’s reply. “You tend to put others before yourself, Carmilla. And you’ve made excellent progress in not doing that lately, but it’s a bit fuzzy where Laura is concerned.”

Carmilla nods, frowning as she thinks over her friends’ words. She sees LaF frown at her, and looks up to meet her friends eye.

“What aren’t you telling us?” LaF asks.

Carmilla hesitates.

“Honey, what is it?”

“Laura has a kid,” she pauses and swallows, avoiding both her friends gazes. “His name is Luke, and he’s like me.”

//

Luke Hollis is three years old and the moment Carmilla meets him she sees herself reflected back in the expression he gives her.

He looks like Laura, and he looks like Mark. The way he looks at Carmilla as though he’s uncertain but intrigued about the dark stranger staring back at him reminds Carmilla so deeply of herself she almost laughs. His dirty blonde hair is flopped to one side in a way that reminds Carmilla of when Laura would push her long hair to the side when she was doing paperwork at their dining room table.

She holds out her hand, smiling at the kid. He stares back at her, unblinking, before extending a small, chubby hand and placing it on top of her open palm.

“Hi Luke,” she says, “My name is Carmilla.”

He doesn’t say anything, not that she expected him to. He doesn’t give any indication of having heard what she said at all. But she shakes his hand slightly before letting it go, and stands up to face Laura who is leaning against the wall behind Luke.

“He looks like you,” is all she says.

Laura smiles. “Dad said the same thing.”

Carmilla nods, looking down again at Luke who is looking back at her with an expression she can’t quite read. She looks back up at Laura. “When did you know? That he’s like me, I mean.”

Laura laughs lightly. “Almost as soon as I brought him home. Is that weird to say? He just. I don’t know. I felt it, and then he didn’t really make much noise and he seemed to _watch_ people. And then I remembered how you do the same thing and it just kind of made sense, you know?”

She smiled down at her son who was still watching Carmilla with a guarded sort of expression.

“The doctor told me I should take him to a psychiatrist last year when he didn’t seem to be developing as quickly as other kids. They gave me the diagnosis.” 

There's a pause. 

"Plus he does that thing with food that you do. Where they can't touch on the plate. It took me longer than I'd like to admit to realise what was up with that."

Carmilla nodded, and smiled down as the boy in front of her. He met her gaze, and she knelt down in front of him again.

“You’ll be alright kid.”

He tilted his head slightly, and Carmilla knew he understood.

//

When Luke turned five, he started at the school Carmilla was working at.

He wasn’t in her class, but she saw him on the playground sometimes. He was always alone, but that didn’t seem to bother him. He sat in the sandbox, digging holes and filling them in again. He always used the red spade, and sat in the top left corner. When the bell rang, he would put the red spade in the red bucket, before dusting himself off and walking down the left side of the sandbox back to his classroom.

Carmilla watched him, but she didn’t intervene.

He was doing alright.

//

“Why don’t they like me, Carm? The other kids?”

“They just don’t understand you, kid.”

“Why?”

“We’re different, you and I. Other people don’t always get it. They might think we are a bit weird, because we think differently. But that’s okay. It’s good to be different.”

“Okay.”

//

James doesn’t question it when Luke and Laura come over for the weekend movie. Not initially, anyway.

When they leave, Luke asleep in Laura’s arms, he leans his shoulder against the wall and crosses his arms against his chest.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he says, “But I have to ask anyway.”

“Ask what?” Carmilla responds.

“What’s up with Laura and you?”

Carmilla frowns, thinking. When she answers, James doesn’t seem all that surprised.

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you should figure that out.”

//

She started going to dinner on Fridays.

Luke told her the seat next to him was for her. She didn’t argue.

//

Carmilla likes her job.

There’s no routine, but she’s realised over the years that that’s not necessarily a bad thing. She likes her classroom, and she likes the kids. To her surprise, they seem to like her, too.

The school is a forty-minute bus ride from her apartment, though after the first few months James started driving her in the morning because it was on his way anyway. That made things easier, especially when she started having more things to carry to and from work each day.

She liked putting the smiley-face stickers on the kids’ work.

Sometimes, she thinks, it makes no sense that a job with so much structure to it has so little routine. She says as much to Dr. Fieldman one day, in one session not long before he retired.

“Sometimes things don’t need to make sense, Carmilla,” He had said, looking at her in the way he always did over the top of his glasses.

“What do you mean?”

“Only that routine and patterns don’t always need to be there. Sometimes we can find enjoyment in the non-routine. Your job is one of those. It has the structure, you go and you teach, then you come home and grade work, and you do it again the next day. But outside of that bare structure, anything can happen. And that’s what you can find enjoyment in.”

This job was definitely different to her last one, which was always the same thing each day. There wasn’t any variation there. At the time, that was a good thing. It was safe. But now, she doesn’t know if she’d find the same feeling of safety at that workplace. Not like she does now, in her classroom with her kids, putting smiley-face stickers on their work and showing them how to hold a pencil.

Seeing them succeed, even in the chaotic-ness that came from a room full of five year old, made her happy. More than she thought was possible when she was going through college.

Dr. Fieldman was looking at her again, and she realised she hadn’t responded.

She didn’t know what to say.

Dr. Fieldman smiled.

//

Laura kissed her on a Thursday.

It wasn’t entirely out of the blue. Carmilla had felt the change happen between them gradually. But feeling Laura’s lips on hers after what had felt like an eternity was….good.

It was good. It was different, yet familiar, and it was safe.

It didn’t feel like home, and it didn’t feel like she remembered or had imagined at different points since Dany happened.

It was good.

It was happy.

Carmilla kissed her back, and the world seemed to be alright again.  
  


//

> _Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart_  
>  _And you'll never walk alone_  
>  _You'll never walk alone_


End file.
